


Death of a Futurist

by EVVS



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-31
Updated: 2015-05-31
Packaged: 2018-04-02 03:34:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4044319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EVVS/pseuds/EVVS
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Control over the technological spectrum of the stock market is entirely different from control over a team of superheroes. To be able to predict the future for one doesn't mean that such foresight is possible for the other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Death of a Futurist

 

 

> "I'm a futurist. The way my mind works...we can intuit the future. That's why we're such successful inventors. We know what people will need before people even know they're going to need it." - Tony Stark

 

Maybe the propulsion calibration is done. Maybe he can finally settle himself.

No, no, busy hands, busy mind. He reaches for the bottle while looking between the screens and his own handiwork. He can do better, right? The death of a futurist lay in the fact that improvement never ended and that the world would keep moving forward because everything could always be better.

So why the hell isn’t he good enough to begin with?

Chest tightening. Maybe he’s drunk, maybe it’s the guilt. On second thought, it’s definitely both, but that doesn’t mean his self-control over it is any better over either factor of this equation as he sweeps a vengeful hand across the desk, monitors, tools, bottles, and tech shattering and smashing upon contact with the floor. Because what use is technology at all if he can’t protect those he loves?

\--

_Buildings faced out at the docks, staring out over the Upper Bay as the street was swathed in mob men, villains, gunfire, and Avengers._

_Cap and Widow stood closely side-by-side facing the mob men who stood in a sloppy formation; they watched as carnage hit the streets, warfare taking over as turf was defended. “How are we planning on splitting this up, Stark?” asked the Widow, from behind the safety of Steve’s shield, firing around his shield and making men drop with cries of pain. A surefire sign of victory, although Steve probably would’ve argued otherwise._

_Iron Man himself was just trying to get a shot in at any of the other Wrecking Crew, knowing the heavy hitters were needed on that side of the battlefield. “It looks like Kingpin’s mob is trying to take down the Wrecking Crew, ah, JARVIS’s scans are coming off like there’s some kind of energy source that- yep, there it is.” The thermal scanners picked up high readings where Piledriver making his way to get his ass out of dodge. “Someone cut him off, we’ve got to keep this contained.”_

_Whoever thought a fight busting out on a street with civilians had made a terrible mistake._

_“There’re two civilians at your four, Steve,” radioed Clint in from the rooftop where he supervised, an arrow at the ready, acting as everyone’s back-up, just trying to keep tabs. “Should be easier if you cover him, Nat.” Still, he had to make sure the bigger problems were handled too, knowing he had the best perspective, so with a pivot on one foot, an explosive arrow landed right ahead of the escaping Crew member, causing him to fall back a few yards, which was enough of a stall for Thor to give him a nice uppercut to the jaw._

_“Thank you, Legolas,” breathed Stark before he had to get back to work himself, trying to avoid getting slammed out of the sky by a wrecking ball but also keeping an eye on everyone, making sure Thor was handling the big guns. Stark himself was getting the Wrecker to dance with well-placed blasting; inside his mask, he was definitely smirking._

_It unfolded easily enough, Cap and Nat handling their own, trying to keep the gunfire to a minimum by knocking down mob men like pins in a bowling alley. Bruce lay on standby within a few blocks in case anything should take a terrible turn for the worse._

_So far, the energy source was contained, that was good enough, secondary priority because the fight with the Wrecking Crew was coming at the Avengers now rather than taking a turn for an escape with the prize. Tony felt his prioritizing was pretty solid. Piledriver was down, the Wrecker and Thunderball were distracted, and Thor was holding his own with Bulldozer, which was a fight that wouldn’t last long with the greatness that was lightning, one thing Tony wished he could find a way to replicate with Stark tech…_

_“We should be good, our success rating is at ninety-eight percent.” He couldn’t see any flaws in the plans, although guns usually complicated things. “You two might want to stop shooting and start moving in.”_

_“I’ll give you cover,” added in Clint from above, watching for a signal from Nat before loosing three arrows into the throngs of men, their impact causing white smoke to rise like marble pillars into the air._

_The gunfire went quiet, men afraid of shooting their own. The shouting rose up instead._

_And the two dove into the masses, separate balls of energy moving like fast, furious savages. One taking men down with sheer brute force, the other with a show of aggressive acrobatics._

_“We should have this under control,” breathed Stark, watching between his own two targets, recognizing that they had to go down before they realized their prize was in the wind- And there was Thor to handle Thunderball now that Bulldozer was down, one more to go, Tony could handle that, not a big deal. Everything was covered, Hawkeye had an eye on them all, and it was manageable._

_Until it wasn’t._

__\--_ _

“Tony, I heard a-“ Steve pauses in the doorframe to the lab, seeing a broken man with quivering hands, one of them wearing an armor gauntlet, cracking open another beer; the shattered remnants of other bottles turn the floor into a minefield of glass. And Steve won’t go any further.

“Why?” he asks, not even to Steve, not even to JARVIS, just at the air, like talking to a ghost. “I thought we had it covered.” Desperation is leaking into his words, his eyes, and his voice is shaking. Whatever confidence he put on normally is gone, the façade broken away into this shriveled up man.

Steve knows what death looks like. It’s a man who has bled out because of a missing arm; it’s a man who’s been burned alive, corpse left to rot on the frontline; it’s a man who can’t be moved without killing him. It’s defeat that takes over any sense of hope and crushes men from within. He knows that a battlefield is a place of death and destruction, and that in itself is a grim vision.

It’s not like none of them didn’t expect this. Someday, someone was going to die. No one thought it would be so soon, especially not on something so easy.

He takes a swig of his beer and still watches the air in front of him, eyes blind while a million different things are flashing through his mind. “A ninety-eight percent success rate.” Then he scoffs and his face creases up, teeth grinding. “Of course, that’s our success of a win in battle, so that takes into account the fact that we’ll win but not the losses we’ll accrue along the way, that- that wasn’t in the calculations. It doesn’t compute collateral damage against the concept of a win.”

Of course, people dying hadn’t been a problem until now.

“I’m supposed to be leading this team. Hell, I’m supposed to be leading this country into the technologically advanced future.” And with that, his mouth hangs open for a moment, moving as if trying to grasp for words. After a moment, he finds them: “But I can’t even keep you all alive.”

__\--_ _

_Thunder rattled the air. Lightning pierced the air, striking down the last of the Wrecking Crew. Finally, they could handle whatever this energy source was and assess what kind of threat level they were looking at with this strange attack. Who would ever steal from Kingpin without a damn good reason?_

_An order: “You’re supervising up there, Cupid.” Tony made a slightly less than graceful landing next to the device. His systems began scanning for radioactivity, fluctuations in the heat signature, and the other necessities. Just to check._

_“I can do that.” His bow remained at the ready, keeping a close eye on Nat and Steve through the smoke, watching their heat signatures move through the crowd, dropping men like flies._

_“We just need enough time to see if Kingpin’s guys obtained it legally. Otherwise we’re just being dicks and stealing their stuff.” He smirked. “As much as I’d love to just be a pain in his ass, this isn’t our call right now."_

_Everyone was relatively quiet on the coms except for Cap and Widow’s miscellaneous grunts and breathing patterns. It helped Hawkeye track their safety better, so no one could complain. The rest of the noise was just Tony mumbling to himself while Thor knelt down beside it to check for any kind of sigils or other magical markings. That was just the white noise everyone was used to blocking out._

_“Tasha, your six!”_

_Heads snapped in her direction._

_And Black Widow flipped herself around just in time to watch a man with a gun fall prey to an arrow from above. “Thank you, Clint.” Ever so polite._

_He let out a curt laugh. “It’s what I do, Agent Roman-“_

_It only took one man with a machine gun. He was already on the ground, only conscious enough to know he needed to try and shoot someone. He may have been aiming for the rooftops, he may not have been, but whatever he was going for, he shot a bird out of the sky._

_No one was watching out for him. No one knew he was falling until he’d already hit the ground, a bullet buried in his head, dead instantly._

__\--_ _

He can’t say it wasn’t Tony’s fault. Steve can’t even say it wasn’t his own fault: he and Nat should’ve been handling the guns just as much as the men behind them. There were probably plenty of things that could’ve been done differently to change what had happened. Steve knows that it doesn’t matter now. War is war.

Maybe that was how he cleaned his slate so easily. He has seen men fall in the line of duty before, with worse wounds nonetheless, crying and writhing until Death came to seize them. It isn’t that he feels no guilt, just that he knows the price they pay for their duty to their country, even as Avengers.

Everyone else is handling it in their own ways: managing. The silence is louder without their resident asshole around to make his snide comments. And maybe they did joke too often about bonding over pretending to need Hawkeye because suddenly he isn’t there to call their shit; sometimes a natural lull in the conversation even falls where he would’ve cut in with a sarcastic remark…

“Fury said he has- had a family.” The correction burns in his throat. Still, he talks to the air: “I already told him I’ll send them money, full college tuition for the kids.” Tony swallows hard. “They don’t have a dad anymore. And I can’t fix that.”

He knows what that feels like, to grow up knowing someone should’ve been watching over him. Daddy was always there but never had the time. Daddy built him a robot and hoped it would be enough. Daddy didn’t realize that Tony needed a father. And the idea that he let that fate hit another household, more children with no father to come home to…

"It’s behind us now.” Steve has to handle it with a level voice. He dares to brave the minefield that is the floor, now covered in glass and screws and other metal pieces. In the center of it all is a dying soldier. “It’s in the past.”

“I should’ve seen it coming. I know everything. I had success ratings, I had eyes on everyone, and we didn’t even realize until after all the men were down.” Tony watches it all flash behind his eyes again, the walls of his lab disappearing. He can hear them sounding off over coms. Black Widow. Captain America. Thor. And Tony- his chest hurts- even made a joke that maybe Clint’s hearing aids were acting up.

Natasha was the first to notice his body.

Steve’s voice snaps Tony back. “It’s behind us, you can’t change it.” Glass crackles beneath his boots.

“I’m supposed to be predicting the future. I’m basically-“ His voice almost carries a bit of a laugh in it as he forces words out. “-almost solely in charge of where our planet’s technology is going. I’m designing some of our greatest defenses against things like the Chitauri and Loki, and- and I can’t even keep one fight under control. What the hell kind of futurist am I?”

“You’re just a man with a big brain, Tony.” As much as Steve consistently has to knock Tony’s ego down about twenty pegs at a time, he never thought he’d have to do it in this context, to almost boost his self-esteem. “You aren’t any kind of psychic. Clint’s death isn’t your fault.”

“I know. But it means that I can be wrong. And how am I supposed to try to save the world with my technology if I can’t save one man?” Tony’s eyes, finally turning his head to peer at Steve, are empty: dead.


End file.
